Oddbean

The point with using words is that you are referring to a Schelling point that the word represents. In that, your perception is not important, it is what others agree on the word means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) A good way to extract the Schelling point of meaning of words is AI, that is basically what the statistical model does (it does it on semantic vector embedding layer, so very early AI, pre-gpt was already good at it). This is one of the rare examples where you can actually use AI output as an argument, because it's a direct task that the AI's statistical model is trained on. Also what is funny to me is that Bitcoin is the best example of a cryptocurrency. I don't think it's a good strategy to deny common knowledge, it will never change everyone's mind. A good analogy would be - when people talk about plant medicine, please understand that many plants will just kill you. Not every plant is good for you, even though it's natural. If you want to use a cryptocurrency, use the best one. What is the best one? Well, we have a thing for that, it's called a market, what do people agree on (Schelling point again)? Check the cryptocurrency market cap. Much more useful than denying obvious reality of how people understand words. https://m.primal.net/JrEz.png

Another Schelling point example (AI is good at these actually). https://image.nostr.build/adfda089b1728fa3ba126fb310d2604b6162655fb0ae97e719744501b1ea45d2.png Crypto = Cryptocurrency. That is what people mean when they use this word. They don't mean "only the shitty currencies except Bitcoin". Words are a Schelling point and their meaning is emergent of how they are used. We might not like it, but trying to redefine how people use the words is useless. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Probably the best example of a cryptocurrency, in short crypto. But yes - you can say "Bitcoin, not crypto (in general)" as in "I focus on Bitcoin, not the whole category, because I think other cryptocurrencies are horseshit". You should not say "Bitcoin is not crypto", because it is, it is what people mean by the word crypto (=cryptocurrencies) and Bitcoin is a perfect example of a cryptocurrency.

this fall in the category of argumentation "the market has decided, accept it" and my response would fall in the category "we individuals are the market, so I as individual will fight for affirming reasonable truth over this nonsense"

yes, like if you build things that mimic the aspect of a plane but dont fly, and you invent the name "wingableshelics" for that cathegory of objects, it still dont have sense to call a plane a particular iteration of a wingableshelics. Is a disservice to people that want to understand what a plane is and how it flights, the only interested in sell their wingableshelics and the narrative associated with them are the ones that build them. Even if they will gain market popularity, sane and knowledgeable people would be pissed off and would say something like "its a plane, it flights, it works, its NOT a wingableshelics. These things are a class of useless objects built with the intention to stole money from you that have understood vaguely that some objects with wings can fly and they are selling you their shit that mimic it, scamming you".

The only problem that the term cryptocurrency was used at least since 1998 (Wei Dai's b-money paper). And people use crypto just as a short for cryptocurrency. So the category was invented way before, it included the predecessors to Bitcoin and Bitcoin itself, way before other coins joined. Your analogy is this completely wrong.

Ecash cashu or GNU taler are cryptocurrency? Are they more similar to precedent attempts to do electronic cash based on cryptography than what today is called cryptocurrency. But no, ask to chatgpt, by definition a cryptocurrency is express in function of bitcoin as a sort of clone of it that needs to have a "blockchain" and all the famcy stuffs. But not achieving what of bitcoin achieves. So they have the form of the planes, the wings and the fancy stuffs but they dont fly. But the name "wingableshelics" was used prior the inventions of the planes, from an ancient tribe to abstractly refer to prototipe of planes that actually somethimes was even able to fly for some meters.